Kim had a Glock model 20 10 mm pistol with him. He was able to stop the attack by shooting the bear as it charged at him. While backing away from the charging bear, Kim tripped and fell backward. He instinctively attempted to fend off the bear with his foot, while he concentrated on firing the shots that saved his life. The last shot was just short of contact. It probably hit the bear in the chest, but also took off the tip of one of Kim's toes.

Kim Woodman was kind enough to grant me an interview.

On Friday, the 29th of July, Kim impulsively decided to take a day hike up Humpy creek. He did not expect trouble. Almost as an afterthought, he put the Glock model 20 10mm pistol and a box of ammunition in his day pack.

I was just moving up Humpy crick there, I had just thrown the gun in my pack.I
saw bear scat, so I loaded the gun, with 15 rounds in the magazine,
none in the chamber. That is the way I grew up and was taught by my
dad.I put the pistol in my pants pocket.

Kim was born in Alaska. He is 57 years old. His father homesteaded in the state in 1938, and was one of the first bear guides there. Kim has spent nearly all his life in Alaska, with a few winters spent in Nevada going to high school. Kim is very familiar with bears and how to deal with them. He has encountered many bears on a lot of creeks. From Kim:

I have been in that situation a lot, you are going up a creek, you see a bear, you back up.Generally you can back out, and the bear will just slink off.

Kim did not want to shoot the bear. But even more, he did not want to be mauled 4 1/2 miles from his skiff in dense woods and rough terrain. He had hiked up Humpy creek instead of following the trail. As Kim puts it:

I did not want to be the guy shooting a sow with cubs. But even more I did not want to be the guy mauled.It was about 4 1/2 mile out from my skiff. I had just downloaded an app to show topographic details. I used that to find the trail for heading back out. It was very thick. I did not want to fight the brush on the way back.There was no cell phone connection.

Kim was making some noise as he went up the creek. The cover was very thick. There were plenty of mosquitoes:

There
wasn't a lot of noise, and I was not making a lot of noise. I was
busting through brush and mosquitoes and sweat. It was a pretty ugly mosquito year.

It was just another creek with some bear sign, and the chance of meeting a bear.You think it isn't
going to happen until it does. So it is best to be prepared.

Kim instinctively attempted to back away, but the sow was having none of it. The cubs saw Kim just as he saw them, from about 30 feet away, across a little opening in the dense woods.

I am moving up this really thick stuff, too much fallen over the creek itself to go up it. There was a deep hole in Humpy creek, and the bears were in the hole.

The cubs and I saw each other first, across about a 30 foot opening. The cubs went scampering off and the sow saw me and came straight at me.

She had to come up a little bit of bank, that gave me a little extra time to make sure I chambered a round. I was shouting at her when I realized that I had to shoot. I let about three go, and then she was right on top of me.

That is when I tripped backward and she was right up on me when I let go with the last round that took the tip of my toe off.

Even if she had only got me for a few seconds, I do not know if I would have been able to crawl out.

Kim's description of how he perceived the situation is pretty common for deadly force events:

Hooked my heel on something while backing up and firing. Thick alders and brush.

It wasn't even like I was falling. There was tunnel vision, concentrating on the shot. I instinctively put my foot up at the same time, and snapping a shot off.

Kim said that there wasn't any real choice. The sow was totally committed. She had made the decision to attack, and was in a full out charge. Kim said that he clearly remembers shooting two handed.

The whole situation only took about 4 seconds. The final shot was very close. Park Ranger Jason Okuly found Kim's sunglasses at the scene. They had fallen off the top of Kim's head as he fell backward.

Okuly said that the sunglasses were only two feet from the bear's head. He also retrieved two empty cases and returned them to Kim. He told Kim that they noticed at least three hits. One in the left eye, one in the mouth, and one in the chest. They did not look too closely because the carcass was bloated and stinking pretty badly by the time they were able to reach it.

The sow was eight years old, and about 400 lbs.

It wasn't until the action had stopped that Kim noticed that he had hit his own foot while shooting at the bear. He saw blood coming out of his boot.

Everything happened so fast, 4 seconds, and you are standing there with a dead sow, and I see blood coming out of my boot.

Photo courtesy Kim Woodman

Kim chose to walk out immediately, before the adrenaline rush from the
defensive shooting wore off. On the way out, his leg started to cramp
up. That is when he made the video of his booted foot with the hole in
it, on his iphone.

Once he got back to the skiff, he had a 12 mile
ride back to Homer. He tied up the skiff at the 160 foot landing craft
that is parked there, walked to his truck, and drove to the emergency
room.

The red arrow shows the approximate location of the shooting. Satellite photo from Google maps.

Kim chose the Glock because he liked how light and tough it was. He had two revolvers before the Glock, a Ruger stainless .357 and a Colt Anaconda .44 magnum.

When he learned how much the Anaconda was worth (it is a fairly rare, collectible revolver) he sold the Colt. He said that because he spent a lot of time on salt water, he knew the Anaconda would get beat up and lose considerable value. A few years later he picked up the Glock.

The ammunition that he was using was the HPR 10mm 180 grain JHP ammunition made in Payson, Arizona. The velocity claimed is 1270 fps, for 650 foot pounds of energy. Kim says he expects to get some Buffalo Bore cartridges in the future.

Photo courtesy Kim Woodman

24 years ago, Kim had to shoot another bear that was intent on doing him harm. That bear was quite a bit bigger, about 850-900 pounds, with a very large head. It squared at 9 to 9 1/2 feet.

Kim was hunting moose when it happened in 1992. He had a bear permit, but he wanted to get a moose for meat before he went bear hunting. The bear made the choice for him. He was stalking a moose when it happened. From Kim:

I saw a moose out on the swamp, real early in the morning.I
heard something behind me, and it was padding up on me. I had a bear
tag, but I wanted a moose first. I had just enough time to swing the
rifle around. I yelled at it, and got a real aggressive response. There
were a lot of problem bears around, a bad berry year, a guy had gotten
eaten by a bear.

The bear was so close that Kim could not use the scope on his .338 Winchester Magnum. He sighted down the side of the barrel. Trophy hunters do not shoot bears in the head. It ruins the skull as a trophy, and makes the skull impossible to score for the record books. The bear was coming at him, but not full out. It was only 15 feet away when he shot. It went down as if he had scrambled its brains, but the bullet had gone through the muscle alongside the skull, just nicking the bone. It knocked the bear out. Kim thought it was dead.

All
of a sudden I heard a growl, so I went back in there, obviously you
can't leave a wounded bear around. It was whirling in a circle,
tearing out chunks of the tundra. I stuck the barrel up against its neck, and the 250 grain .338 did not make it out the other side of its neck.

The bear Kim shot in 1992. Photo courtesy Kim Woodman. It is a big bear, from the size of the front paws.

Kim said that he had learned lessons from the recent bear shooting. He is going to buy a holster or two. He is consciously going to practice *not* backing up, and shooting rapidly. He says that in a crisis, you act as you have trained to act. He also said that when you are around bears a lot, familiarity can cause you to lose the healthy respect you should have.

Very few people have to kill two bears in self defense in their lifetime. Kim does not view it as something to aim for. It happened as part of the necessity of survival.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I just want to thank you for putting together posts like this among the stories you collect and assemble about defensive uses that many in media like to claim do not exist. I know they take some time, and I just wanted you to know that folks like me appreciate that time spent.

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Background

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” -- Thomas Jefferson

Syndicated columnist Charley Reese (1937-2013): "Gun control by definition affects only honest people. When a politician tells you he wants to forbid you from owning a firearm or force you to get a license, he is telling you he doesn’t trust you. That’s an insult. ... Gun control is not about guns or crime. It is about an elite that fears and despises the common people."

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles -- Jeff Cooper (1920-2006)

Note for non-American readers: Crime reports from America which describe an offender just as a "teen" or "teenager" almost invariably mean a BLACK teenager.

We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

How much do you know about Trayvon Martin? Did you recognize him in the picture above? If not you may need to know more about him. It's all here (Backups here and here)

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

After all the serious stuff here, maybe we need a funny picture of a cantankerous cat